László Varga

Since the day we arrived, and actually before ever leaving Cluj, we knew, that we would visit one of the nearby islands while being in Split. According to the information available on the net, there are several islands, each with it’s own unique way of attracting tourists. Of course apart from what’s there, there is another thing which needs to be considered: ease of access within a day. After considering all aspects, we decided, that the best place to visit in our situation was Bol, on the island of Brac.

We chose this specific location, due to a specific beach: Zlatni Rat Beach. To get there, however, there are several things to consider: there is hourly ferry connection between Split and the island of Brac, but the connection is to the town of Supetar, which is exactly on the opposite side of the island. So, we needed to be sure, that once we get to the island, there is a means to get to our destination. Well, there is. Actually there are several possibilities: either get on the ferry by car (and then there is no issue on the other side), or hop on to the local bus which can take you to the other side within an hour. Oh, yes, there are also taxis, which theoretically take you to Bol at the same price as the bus (I don’t really believe that, though), but I would not advise that if you do not want to see your breakfast again 😛 …

In the end we chose the ferry+bus combination. The ferry per person costs 33kn one way and the bus costs 50kn per person if you buy the return ticket also (it is 40kn one way otherwise). So the whole trip there and back cost us 232kn. It is cheaper than taking the car with the ferry, then drive around there and also worry about parking… Of course this way we had to be at the ferry latest by 9AM, which crossed over in 50 minutes. At 10:30AM the bus took off and after stopping at almost every possible village on the way, we arrived to Bol at around 11:30 AM. So basically it took us 3 hours to get to a beach. We really hoped it was worth the trouble…

Compared to Split, Bol is a real beach resort. You are far away from the sounds of the city and the water is much cleaner than in Split. In fact, I have never seen a cleaner beach in my life, so it was perfect for taking pictures at least 🙂 . After a 20 minute walk from the bus station, we arrived to the actual beach: it looked clean and less crowded than the ones in Split and there were still several sun-chairs left. Later we found out why: being so far from the city, prices are a bit steeper in Zlatni Rat. One chair costs 50kn. If you want an umbrella with that you need to pay 50kn more. So we payed 150kn for two sun-chairs and an umbrella. The plastic table came as a bonus 😉 . Of course the other alternative was to sit on a towel on the pebbly beach or in the shades a bit further from the shore… but we wanted the full experience: almost front row seats admiring the beautiful white and blue colors of the sea and listening to the calming sound of the waves without getting a sunburn 😉 .

Lunch can also be solved directly at the beach. There are several fast food boutiques and even restaurants right on the beach. The prices are higher than in Split and they charge for the restrooms also. Yes, this beach was pricier than the ones in Split, but for one day, it was an interesting experience. To top that you also get a bus ride which takes you through some idyllic local villages and some winding roads among the cliffs just above the seashore. This last one was a bit scary part, but breathtakingly beautiful 😉 .

I have uploaded some pictures here.

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7

We were advised to visit several interesting places around Split during our stay. One of them is Trogir, a small town, which, much like Split, preserved a lot of its old walls and buildings to the enjoyment of tourists of our time.

The Trogir visit was a half day activity: it is just a half hour drive from Split (well, that is if you do not get stuck in traffic and spend almost an hour instead) on the same direction as Split airport. When you approach this small town by car, the first thing that pops up in a driver’s head is: where do I park? Well assuming you have a GPS, you try to get to the center as much as possible and look for a parking place there. In our case, when it said we have a 1-2 minute drive left, I just entered the first parking spot on the left 😀 . We basically parked in the parking area just next to the bus station near the bridge leading onto the small historic island. The best thing about this parking lot was the guy greeting us: he was sitting on a bicycle as we entered, made a sign and led us to the most appropriate spot… neat 🙂 .

So, on to the historic island itself. It is basically a miniature version of the city center of Split. It has a similar atmosphere also, including the huge crowds of tourists that always get into your perfect artistic photo of a building. One thing that was different, was the nice yachts just next to the city walls: it kind of gave off a vibe of a more refined and restricted city center. One thing I did not like, was the fee they wanted to charge for entering churches. I know tourists can be a good source of money, but it is not nice to charge people for entering a church. You charge people for entering a fort maybe, which we did and gladly payed the 25kn per person entry into Kamerlengo Castle, but we skipped the church…

The small promenade where the yachts were docked is filled with nice restaurants, which have their menu available in several languages. We picked the one having also hungarian (its amazing how the small things can make a difference 🙂 ), and had a nice meal before heading back to one of the beaches in Split…

Photos have been uploaded here.

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6

The sixth morning was a bit melancholic on our cruise. It was the beginning of the last full day on the ship. Nevertheless, it was a day with another great place that we were about to visit. The destination for this day was Dubrovnik, one of the nicest coastal cities of Croatia.

We did not book ahead to any trip in Dubrovnik, we figured, that if the ship is docked, we can explore the city on our own. Boy were we surprised, when we learned, that we are going to be just anchored next to Dubrovnik, using the ships life-boats as tender service to the shore. Luckily the tender service was free of charge, we just had to sign up for a ticket for one of the boats leaving at specific intervals from the ship to the old port of Dubrovnik. In order to get one of the tender-boats leaving at a reasonable time, we had to stand in a HUGE queue (apparently everyone thought it was a good idea not to book ahead in Dubrovnik) and sign up early to them (I was up at 6:30 to get in line before opening time and the queue was already huge). I was targeting the tender leaving at 9:00 but I was not really sure if I was able to catch a ticket to that, because I was quite at the end of the queue… To my surprise I did: apparently the tender-boats were large enough to accommodate a lot of people at once (120 to be more precise). So, I happily went back to our cabin with a big smile having a job well done (well, the queue actually got even bigger after I left, so my timing was not so bad after all), waving the tickets victoriously: we had time to have our breakfast in a reasonable time and get to the shore calmly 😉 .

Since day one I was curious about how the life-boats look like from the inside. I did not want to find out the hard way (that would have meant that ship has gone “titanic”), but still I wanted to find out. So, I was actually quite excited about the fact that we were about to use them. When we got in I found out, that it was much bigger than even the tender boat we used in Santorini (it’s maximum capacity was 150! people). The ride, which took us ashore was also quite fun: the boat was going with relatively high speed and when it hit the wave of one of the returning boats it went into some fun up&down shaking waking everyone up if they did not wake up, yet 😉 . The boat ride took a few minutes during which we passed some of the local boats as well as the life-boats of another cruise ship anchored quite dangerously close to the shore (yes, it was a Costa ship 😉 ). With tourists coming from two cruise-ships at the same time into the already quite crowded city, the outlook for the day was just great 😉 .

After getting ashore right next to the old city wall, we already faced a quite large crowd of tourists heading into the city. Well, we decided to follow the flow and try and not get lost 🙂 . The flow took us through the main street of Dubrovnik, right trough two churches, a few gift shops, until we arrived to one of the entry points to climb on top of the city walls. A lot of the photos of Dubrovnik were views from the top, so there had to be something special up there… We decided to pay the price of 100 Kunas (~€12.00) per person and climbed the stairs leading up to the top. Well, there were a bit fewer people on top than down on the streets, but then again, the path was also narrower. There was a lot more air, so that was definitely better, but the real wow effect was the actual view of the city and the sea from there. It was absolutely fantastic. I could not stop taking photos, and neither could others, making the flow of people on the walls quite slow, which in turn meant that it was going to take quite some time until we walked around the entire historic center following the walls. There are two points where we could have come off, but we decided to do the entire circle, spending about 2-3 hours on the top. This time was about enough of the city and we decided to head off, because there seemed to be quite a long queue at the tenders returning to the ship.

We basically followed the same route to get back to our tender after we got off the walls, so we quickly found the way back to the port, but there the queue got so long that we barely just got through the main gate and we already had to stand in line in one of the queues (yes, there were about three). Here every culture brought its best in showcasing their way of standing in line. I was especially proud to see the Italians just pushing their way all the way to the front, but hey, I lived enough among them not to expect any miracles here 😉 In any case, the tender service got everyone back to the ship in time and nobody was left ashore. We even could have a quite decent lunch without too much running around to find ourselves a place to sit down 🙂 .

And what about Dubrovnik? Well, it was a nice experience, I would probably visit again and stay 1-2 days, preferably when there are less tourist. I do not actually know when that time is, given the fact that there are about 4 million of them visiting each year…

I have uploaded a few photos here.

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